


Paths

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Angst, and gratuitous use of implied tronnor angst to propel plot point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6439795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a million and one places that their paths could have diverged along the way. Most of them are small, outside the boundaries of their awareness, but a few stand out.  (Prompted by: halou - honeythief)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paths

There are a million and one places that their paths could have diverged along the way. Most of them are small, outside the boundaries of their awareness, but a few stand out.

*

Dan could have stayed with the girl that he loved, because he did love her, he really did. She was warm and sweet and familiar and he knows with a wistful certainty that he would not have been unhappy with her with. She would have held his hand through all his struggles and made him revise for all his courses and been an anchor when he drifted. She was his best friend, once upon a time, and when he looks back he can’t find any regrets in the time he spent with her. 

But he walked away from a good thing into the arms of an amazing one, and he doesn’t regret that, either. She was wonderful but she’d never have made his heart still skip going on seven years later. A future with her would have been stability and a slow acceptance that his life was going to play out exactly the way all good boys in old storybooks always do; a job that he hates and a wife that he doesn’t and a child or two to make it all worth it in the end. 

Instead his life is a roller coaster of climbing success, adrenaline shock and exhilaration of the next big thing always just around the corner. And sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes in his guiltier moments, he almost wishes he’d picked the easier route. 

And then he looks across the kitchen, at Phil with a wooden spoon in his hand stirring a pot of sauce. He looks at the pushed back sweep of Phil’s hair and the way his glasses are slipping down his nose and the faint shadow of going unshaven across his jaw and his heart swells and he gives in to one of those surrealistic moments of awe that creep up on him now and then. This is it, this is what he chose, the grand efforts and the quiet moments, and he knows his feet will carry him anywhere as long as this is who he walks with. 

*

Phil could have fought harder for the boy that came before Dan. 

Sometimes, looking back, he wonders why he didn’t. It’s an idle curiosity, an annoyance he has with himself more than retrospective desire. 

The memories are tainted now but when he manages to push aside all the things that came later, he can still taste the fondness for Charlie that he once had like a faded flavor in the back of his mind. He remembers hours on the phone with Charlie. He remembers the way Charlie’s mum teased them for their attachment. He remembers that first meeting and holding hands with sweaty palms and wondering what he was doing, if this would ever even work. He remembers enjoying the brass way Charlie had with words and being bolder for it himself. 

But they are a half-drawn picture in his mind and what bothers Phil is that he doesn’t remember when he decided to give up. He remembers wanting, and thinking he could have. He remembers hurting, and retreating. When he plays in back in his mind what he wants is to feel like he did everything he could, like it didn’t work out because it was never going to and not because he was too much of a coward to push when he needed to push. 

When the moment really counted, he found a boy who was willing to be brave with him and not for him. A kiss on top of the world (or at least the city of Manchester) and he realized what it meant to think someone was worth screaming at the top of your lungs over. 

He takes no issue with the way things worked out. If he’d been with Charlie when he met Dan, he’s sure they’d have still been friends… but he’s not so sure it would have lasted and he’s not sure either of them would have responded the same way to all the electric signals sparking between them. 

(The idea of a world where Dan’s in his life but is not his life steals his breath away with shocking pain, to the point where he leaves the room to find Dan, just to lay beside him and remind himself that this is his life and this boy is his.) 

* 

They could have let the dream come between them. 

They hear another story of fallen comrades, a couple in the public eye who just didn’t have the stamina to make it. “How long was it, for them?” Dan asks. 

“A year,” Phil says. “Two?” 

There’s a moment of silence between them, each with their own little slice of recollection, of what they were and where they were in their lives two years on into _them_. 

The early years were easy. Youtube was the climb they made together. Finding fame and financial stability was a problem they could tackle in tandem. They existed in a bubble that was always going to pop eventually. It didn’t really happen overnight but somehow it still felt like it did, like they woke up one morning to millions of followers and eyes on them and those lovestruck words Phil once spoke into a camera to an audience of one haunting him in every nook and cranny of the internet that it was his job to not ignore. 

Two years wasn’t quite bad, yet. Three was a test. 

It hurt. They hurt, sometimes. They hurt each other and themselves out of confusion and embarrassment. Three years was the point where they both, in the dark recesses of their minds, wondered if it was worth it. But the question never held enough traction to even be worthy of voicing. 

Because as much as they hurt, they healed, too. They healed each other. They locked their hands together and held on tight when it would have been so much easier to drift away. They dug their heels in and worked through it and made themselves the priority, grateful that everything else was set on a course whose momentum would carry by itself for just a little while. 

They made it, through luck and choice and conviction. 

“Sucks for them,” Dan finally says, but he shifts a little closer on the sofa and rests his head on Phil’s shoulder. 

Phil laughs, not because he finds it funny but because of the relief in feeling like they escaped the fate that most others in their shoes would have succumbed to. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Read and reblog on tumblr :)](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/141806310925/halou-honeythief-phan)


End file.
